For most of this year, in post after post, we (along with about a million other folks, so we can’t take ALL the credit…) warned that the Obama Administration via Obamacare was coming after Religious Freedom, and was going to try to make it virtually impossible to both practice your faith AND operate your business.

Heck, that’s what that whole “contraception” battle really was. It wasn’t about access to condoms or the ‘pill’; it was about your faith being ruled out-of-bounds when it came to owning and operating your company.

And, yes, I of course heard that I was being “ridiculous”, …numerous times.

Yeah. SureI was.

Fast forward to the “Hobby Lobby” lawsuit that is STILL going on right now.

Hobby Lobby is an Oklahoma-based arts and crafts chain founded by David Green and operated by Mr. Green, his wife Barbara, and their children, Steve, Mart, and Darsee.

Over 40 years ago, Mr. Green took out a $600 bank loan to start the business in his garage, and has built it into a multi-billion dollar success story, with over 500 stores in 41 states and more than 13,000 full-time employees. If this were not extraordinary enough, the Green family considers Hobby Lobby a ministry, and insists on running it in accordance with their evangelical Christian faith.

So, for instance, they provide chaplains and spiritual counseling for any employee who wants it; they offer a Christian conciliation program for workplace disputes; they take out hundreds of full-page newspaper ads every Christmas and Easter celebrating the religious meaning of the holidays; they do not carry products inconsistent with their beliefs, like shot glasses and risqué greeting cards and gory Halloween costumes; and, most famously, they close every one of their stores on Sunday, even though they lose millions by doing so.

So, as an article of their free practice of religion, the Greens operate their business according to their faith: no one is beaten or stoned, etc.,.. But they simply don’t wish to be told they have to provide a benefit which in their eyes is murder.

The Greens do not have a religious objection to contraceptives in general. But they do object to “emergency contraceptives” like the “morning after pill” (Plan B) and the “week after pill” (ella) because those drugs — as the FDA’s own birth control guide explains — can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb.

For the Greens, like many Christians, that amounts to a chemical abortion. They cannot in good conscience offer those drugs in their health plan because they believe it implicates them in abortion.

For about the eight billionth time, no one is saying anything about denying someone contraception. We’re talking about the difference between facilitating and paying for something, vs. denying it to someone.

By way of an illustration, try this:

Let’s say you and I live in the same house, and I have a car and you don’t. We live about a mile out-of-town. You want to go into town & get drunk, so you ask me for $$$, AND to drive you into town and back home again. I don’t believe in drinking alcohol and say, “No. You want to go drink? No problem: walk, and use your own money”.

I’m not denying anything to you; I’m simply not paying for it, nor am I trying to make it easier for you to obtain it.

The extra point in that scenario is that we’re talking about the employer/employee relationship and the responsibilities that go along with that. That relationship is supposedto be a mutually benefiting one, however, not either side being a slave to the other’s demands.

All of which brings us back to the legality of Obamacare’s contraception mandate. The Obama Administration has an interesting argument against all this, and when I say “interesting”, what I really mean is: Scarier-than-Helen-Thomas-without-makeup.

The administration responded with an unsettling argument: The Greens aren’tprotected by the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause in this case because they operate a secular business. “Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer,” the Obama administration wrote in a brief, “and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion.”

Part of the administration’s argument is that the mandate controls the corporation’s actions but it does not apply to individual owners.

So, people have First Amendment protections …as long as they don’t start businesses. If they do, and if they operate their businesses according with their own consciences, they “become laws unto themselves,” as the Obama administration puts it.

So this is who the Left has in mind when it says conservatives are trying to legislate morality: people who dare to follow their moral and religious beliefs, as opposed to a code devised by bureaucrats regulating a secular state.

If people want to adhere to their faith, they best stay quiet about it.

You elected him, America. Great job with that.

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The battle of ideas we’ve been waging this year isn’t over by a long shot, the carping and crowing from the Left to the contrary. Actually, that just makes me chuckle. Get real: do YOU remember how Progressives/Liberals immediately abandoned all of their most deeply held beliefs and embraced Conservative ideology after Bush was re-elected in 2004, or Reagan in 1984?

Yeah, neither do I….

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Which means, it’s time for us to go back to work. Our options ain’t all that great, after all: it’s fight the monstrosity of Obamacare, everywhere, or start packing for the Road To Serfdom right now.

I supported their cause yesterday, spent $300. Only one glitch, I had lost my 40% coupon in the store and the cashier wouldn’t give me one, you’d think spending that much money would have warranted me a 40% off one item just on principle, so instead of giving me that $8 discount it ended up costing them $60 when I decided I didn’t need some other items that were in my cart. Oh well, at least now I have more stuff to keep me amused while Mike’s gone, I might even post some of what I’ve made on my blog.

First of all, JTR – THANKS ever so much for the mental image of Helen Thomas without make-up! Lunch isn’t going to happen and I can only hope to have my appetite back by dinner time! (You should become an evil capitalist and send this thought to every dieter in the country at 11AM and 5PM. It’d be a success, for sure.)

Frankly, I’m SICK and TIRED of this mantra from the left as if birth control for others is my responsibility and not theirs.
Whatever happened to “personal responsibility”? Are these folks SO naive that they don’t KNOW the consequences of their actions? If so, perhaps we should have a sterilization program instead. First I’m supposed to pay for their cavalier attitudes toward sex, and then, when they don’t use protection, I’m supposed to pay child support to women I’ve never “known”, IYKWIMAITYD.

To all of the MILLIONS who voted for McCain but somehow couldn’t bring yourselves to the polls to vote for Romney – a heart felt F…..(oops),…
“thank you”.

Welcome to Government, unchained by silly little things like the Constitution.

Are these folks SO naive that they don’t KNOW the consequences of their actions? If so, perhaps we should have a sterilization program instead. First I’m supposed to pay for their cavalier attitudes toward sex, and then, when they don’t use protection, I’m supposed to pay child support to women I’ve never “known”, IYKWIMAITYD.

There was a report on our local news last night about Eugenics and sterilization. The state of North Carolina had just okayed a $50,000 payment to each surviving person who had been forcefully sterilized under the program. Over 7,000 women from the 1920’s up to the 1960’s.

The report also went on to say that the payment program was defunded this year.

Sounds like “North Carolina meets China”…..I’m not for forced sterilization (my prior comment being more tongue-in-cheek-ish), but I AM for personal accountability and personal responsibility. NO ONE has the “right” to expect me or anyone else to compensate them for their life choices…..

In essence the Government is arguing we can have “Freedom of Worship” (personal, private)… but not “Freedom of Religion“ (all pervasive, public square). The point that no one is required to work or shop at Hobby Lobby seems to be lost in the discussion. Adios 1st Amendment!

I use Hobby Lobby whenever I get the chance, the attack on the first amendment and peoples rights will continue. Everybody has been saying they will be forcing people and business to do things that are against their beliefs, along with their rights. This fight isn’t over, we must continue to fight against a government violating our rights and demanding we obey. America in my opinion is going to learn a lesson over the next four years, a hard one but maybe a necessary one.

Reblogged this on The Peanut Gallery and commented:
Peanut Gallery: Freedom of Religion (public,pervasive) vs Freedom of Worship (personal, private). Hobby Lobby and Chic-fil-a are the poster corporations of this debate. Religious Freedom- use it or lose it.

In essence, the irreligious Left can’t fathom why we God-fearers can’t just keep our faith in a little box, cloistered away from the “real world”…integrity is a foreign concept to this generation, and an integrated faith? Nonsense. The things of the spirit are foolishness to those who are perishing. (See I Cor. 2:14)

Right on, GBL! What really grinds my gears is that we constantly hear: “Don’t push your beliefs on me” from the atheist/agnostic Left. But, isn’t that EXACTLY what they’re doing to us? “Godless” is still a religion in my book, and they seem to have NO PROBLEM pushing their religious beliefs on me. Hypocrites.

Great post! Very informative. Good points. I don’t usually read a lot of political posts because, even being married to someone OBSESSED with politics, I don’t feel that I have a good grasp on all the details and become easily confused. This post was packed with information, but still easy for me to digest and understand.

Yeah…Meg doesn’t pay much attn to me as I prattle on. She usually makes some small sign to show she is halfway listen..maybe a “Would you please shut up?” or something like that. The other day I said “Benghazi” and she responded, “God Bless you.”

It’s a good thing I am “on the case” because I notice things others don’t. For example. Hobby Lobby? Sounds kind of like…HOLLY HOBBY..and where has SHE been? She’s gone. Now Hobby Lobby…so I did some checking and realized something. Obama is going after EVERYTHING that has the word “Hobby” in it because most of the things you get when you Google “Hobby” are places with “remote control” stuff. First it was our GUNS and then our First Amendment rights…then our TWINKIES, which I predict will be more rare that gold, which is also yellow-ish, and will be made into the WORLD Monetary Unit. Everything will be Base Valued in Twinkies. For example, a Mercedes may cost $73,000, or 3 and 1/2 Twinkies.

Now, Obama wants our electronics, hence the War on Hobbies. Holly and Lobby were smokescreens… distractions so we wouldn’t see Obama’s evil design but, thanks to my Magic Helmet (“North Winds blow!”) and those pesky kids, his plot has been uncovered.

I don’t know if it MATTERS his plot is exposed. At least 42% (right?) of Americans won’t care what he does because he gave them free phones. That woman was sad but, I kid you not, I could step out my door and throw a rock and it would bounce off of four Welfare Mothers just like her before it hit the ground here.

We must stop Obama’s War on Hobbies and if we can mess up ObamaCare in the process, then I’m with that, whatever it means…like Nancy Pelosi is “with the Constitution.”

As far as Forced Sterilization goes, I support that until people have to take a class and get licensed to reproduce. Some things, like the Gene Pool, are too dangerous to mess with and NO, it is not enough just to have a Flotation Device.

The “Road to Serfdom”? I have three questions: 1) Is there a liquor store on the way where I can buy some Kahlua? B)Do they sell ice? and iii) Do they have a Drive-Thru?
My hair is a mess today and I’d rather not go in.